Greetings from APLIS.It started out a little overcast today but, by afternoon, had turned
into another beautiful day.

We’ve now been joined by our second
playmate - HMS TIRELESS arrived this morning.TIRELESS is one of the Royal Navy’s TRAFALGAR class submarines.Although not as hardened as ALEX is to go
smashing through the ice, TIRELESS has many features that give her an excellent
Arctic capability, including:

-Bow planes that can be retracted to permit the bow to penetrate
ice without damage;

-FINTEL
cameras that can observe the ice abov,e ahead of, and behind the submarine.

-Upward
looking sonars that measure ice draft.

-An upward-looking
sidescan sonar that provides a swath image of the sonar overhead an on both
sides of the submarine.

-Specifically
for this operation, an EM 3002 that measures the ice draft across a swath of
ice above the submarine.

Because of sensors on her deck, TIRELESS can only surface
through open water or slush.One of our
challenges was to find a place for her to surface.This early in the spring, the ice is still pretty consolidated
and there’s not much open water.We had
sighted the beginnings of a lead yesterday afternoon.So, first thing this morning, Randy Ray hopped in the helicopter
and again scouted out a good surfacing site.It turned out the lead was widest just about a mile south of camp.

Randy put a homing beacon in the water.Using her upward-looking sonars, TIRELESS
mapped out the lead and, just after noon, popped up through the slush.

An APLIS View of TIRELESS

Like ALEX, TIRELESS has
been preparing for this mission for several months.The Commanding Officer, CDR Iain Breckenridge is familiar to many
of us ere at APLIS - a few years ago he was the Royal Navy exchange officer in
Groton, CT and was heavily involved in the planning for our 203 camp.Today he showed tat he and his crew have the
Arctic shiphadling skills needed to park a submarine in a narrow lead.

TIRELESS Breaks Through the Ice

Also like ALEX, TIRELESS
has an Arctic Operations Specialist from the Arctic Submarine Laboratory
aboard.Eddie Wills joined the boat about
a month ago and has been sharing his Arctic expertise with the TIRELESS
crew.As mentioned yesterday, LCDR Sean
Szymanskiy - the US exchange officer at Maritime Warfare Centre - is aboard to
to assist with the testing.We’re also
embarking Tim James from QinetiQ supporting the British Defence Science &
Technology Laboratory with some of the testing I’ll talk about later.And, finally, TIRELESS has aboard Dr. Peter
Wadhams and Dr. Nick Hughes from Cambridge University.They have ridden with TIRELESS from the UK
to conduct scientific studies in the Arctic in support of the International
Polar Year (IPY) that began earlier this month.Their primary effort here at APLIS will be to survey the bottom
side of the ice with the EM 3002 sonar.This data will be used in conjunction with the ice mechanics studies
that will be conducted at APLIS after the Navy turns t over to National Science
Foundation in 2 weeks.

While all of this was going on, ALEX was keeping busy.We spent about 12 hours overnight testing
the ACOMMS system.This is a new system
that will allow APLIS and the submarines to exchange short written messages by
transmitting them underwater.Like
almost everything else, underwater sound behaves differently in the Arctic than
elsewhere.We’re testing how well this
system works in the Arctic as well as interoperability with a similar UK system
on the TIRELESS.Over the last two
days, we’ve embarked riders on both submarines to operate their systems.The APLIS system is being operated by Mike Rutkowski
from Naval Undersea Warfare Center and Lee Freitag from Wood’s Hole
Oceanographic Institution.

Our first night’s testing was very successful with most of
the transmissions being received out beyond 10 miles.We’ll do some more single-ship testing tomorrow with TIRELESS
then start doing some 3-way tests.

Both boats are here ad our test program is off to a good
start.But wait - there’s more.TIRELESS dropped off a 3-person documentary
crew who rode her up from the UK.They’re going to stay here at APLIS for a couple days filming our
activity before they head home.

Time to take a quick look at the Northern Lights then head
to the bunkhouse.